At this moment, Charles Doyle no longer had the blessing buff. Looking at the remaining 150 ninja recruitment scrolls, he contemplated a question:
If I exit the system space and perform the blessing ritual again, will I be able to regain the blessing? If so, I could exploit this to gain powerful ninjas with minimal cost.
With this thought, Charles didn't hesitate. He exited the system space, retrieved the ritual items, and set them up again, drawing the magic circle and placing the items just as before.
After completing the ritual, Charles did not feel the same sense of blessing. It seemed his attempt to exploit a loophole had failed.
Far away in Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One observed Charles's repeated attempts to exploit his future self.
She shook her head in exasperation.
Who continuously seeks blessings without pause? Doesn't he fear that borrowing too much power from his future self might lead to his enemies overpowering him?
Seeing Charles's ritual fail this time, the Ancient One thought to herself: It's only normal to fail. If it worked every time, then it would be outrageous.
...
Facing the failed attempt to exploit the blessing, Charles now had two choices. One was to proceed without the blessing, acknowledging that he was currently in a low luck period.
This meant he might need to spend up to another 300 draws, costing around 25,000 more gold coins.
The other option was to perform the blessing ritual once daily, testing how long it took to successfully gain the blessing again.
Then, he could conduct ninja recruitment during the blessed period. With the remaining 150 recruitment scrolls, he could gather enough fragments and potentially spend only a few thousand more gold coins.
The surplus could then be used to further recruit and star-up ninjas. He had never experienced a five-star S-rank ninja and was curious about the immense power it would bring.
In his memory, the two times he encountered five-star A-rank ninjas—Wandering Samurai Senju Tobirama and Young Madara—both were exceptionally powerful. A five-star S-rank ninja would most likely rival even the strongest Sage of six paths.
After some thought, Charles decided to test the interval between successful blessings to determine if it was better to recruit ninjas only during the blessed period or to rely on gold coins.
If the interval was too long, waiting wouldn't be practical.
With his decision made, Charles chose not to proceed with ninja recruitment just yet. Instead, he opened the ninja fragment store to check for suitable ninja fragments.
Opening the system store's ninja interface, four ninja icons came into view:
- B-rank: Mitarashi Anko fragments, daily limit 0/9, 180 gold coins per fragment
- A-rank: Kamui Kakashi fragments, daily limit 0/9, 420 gold coins per fragment
- A-rank: Asuma Sarutobi fragments, daily limit 0/9, 300 gold coins per fragment
- A-rank: Hidan fragments, daily limit 0/9, 300 gold coins per fragment
Upon seeing the four ninja fragments in the store, Charles couldn't help but feel a bit of surprise. He had been thinking about Kakashi Hatake recently, and now a Kamui Kakashi fragment was available.
He clicked on Mitarashi Anko's icon, revealing that he already had nine fragments. Kamui Kakashi had zero, Asuma Sarutobi had two, and Hidan had thirty-four fragments.
Noting this, Charles focused on Hidan. To upgrade, Hidan required sixty fragments.
After some thought, Charles decided to buy all four ninja fragments, spending a total of 10,800 gold coins.
After completing these purchases, Charles exited the system space.
...
The next day, Charles attempted another blessing ritual but, unsurprisingly, it failed again.
He opened the ninja store and found C-rank Rock Lee, B-rank Shippuden Rock Lee, C-rank Neji, and B-rank Shippuden Naruto fragments. After looking through them, he decided not to buy any.
The second day's blessing also failed, and he bought nine Mitarashi Anko fragments for 1,620 gold coins.
The third day's blessing failed as well, and he bought nine Hidan fragments for 2,700 gold coins.
The fourth day's blessing failed, and he didn't purchase any ninja fragments.
The fifth day's blessing failed, and he bought nine Hidan fragments for 2,700 gold coins.
The sixth day's blessing failed, and he didn't purchase any ninja fragments.
The seventh day's blessing failed, and he didn't purchase any ninja fragments.
After a week, Charles still hadn't gathered enough fragments to upgrade Hidan, nor had he succeeded in the blessing ritual.
However, the daily sign-in rewards were quite good: two ninja recruitment scrolls (VIP level 3 double reward), 200 ninja pearls, 50 delicious ramen, 400 reputation points (VIP level 4 double reward), 200 Reincarnation stones, 50,000 copper coins, and two more ninja recruitment scrolls (VIP level 5 double reward).
With today's blessing failed again, Charles decided not to waste any more time on it. Instead, he picked up his phone, ready to inform S.H.I.E.L.D. about Black Panther's location since it had been a week as agreed.
He called Natasha from his contacts. The call connected after a few rings.
"Hello, Mr. Charles."
"Natasha, I've found the location of the target's base. I'll send you a marked map shortly."
"Thank you, Mr. Charles."
After hanging up, Charles said, "Red Queen, send the real location of Wakanda to the number I just called."
"Yes, Master!"
Following Charles's command, the Red Queen sent Natasha a map photo with Wakanda's true location marked.
In S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha received the photo, immediately uploading it to her computer and confirming the marked location.
Seeing the map's location, Natasha was stunned. It was a vast area of dense rainforest, incredibly large.
After double-checking the location, Natasha was at a loss. The rainforest was enormous. How could they search for the enemy's base in such a large area?
Moreover, what about their high-tech ships? It seemed implausible they were built in the middle of a rainforest.